


Dancing in the Dark

by GraceEliz



Series: Shelter of his Wings [1]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Dancing, F/M, Falling In Love, First Kiss, I tried for smut but it ended up being not quite smut, M-rated but not exactly what i wanted, Romance, Stewjon is space Scotland, Wingfic, Yall get a lil smuttery as a treat, Yearning, rated for Quinlan's language and everyone's language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:47:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24979411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceEliz/pseuds/GraceEliz
Summary: Some people fall in love in a breath, in the time it takes to see the colour of her hair and the line of her jaw. For a very lucky few, their love might last long enough, be strong enough, to change the tide of what some would call destiny. For them, love is a stolen dance, and each other's names in the dark, and sacrifice.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Satine Kryze
Series: Shelter of his Wings [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1808101
Comments: 10
Kudos: 36





	1. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (This chapter is sponsored by Romeo & Juliet, Strictly Ballroom, a few marble statues, and my own yearning heart.)  
> The silver-girl laughs, head tipping back in a roar of laughter, for the Mando’ade laugh as hard as they scream, and he is lost. Her eyes are made violet by the purples and blues and creams of her dress, and he may not know what they mean or even who she is, but he knows a work of art when he sees one

She meets his gaze from across the room and raises her eyebrow. She is strong and beautiful, and his heart leaps when he sees the back of her dress when she turns away to talk to her escorts because there are diamond cut-outs radiating out like rays of sun from the dramatic scoop and call him strange but he’s always been struck by the complexity of shoulder and bone and wing – if he could draw, then he would amass studies.

Her shoulder-blades are smoothed into the long curve of her spine by the ream of muscle, the bulk of her shoulders and the heaviness of the dress draping off her spine suggesting she is stronger than most would think to look at, but he is of the winged ones, and he knows human bodies. He is fixated, staring, scolding himself, but the Alpha part of him is near groaning at her beauty. If she had wings, then they would be silvered like her short hair, and sharp, cutting the air like razorblades. Mandalore is only a day journey away from his home-planet Stewjon, and he’s been with his kin before on visits home. They are a strong, hard people who know what it is to have to fight for every free step, to be oppressed and wronged and stolen away, and to have to build themselves stronger than strong just to survive.

Fionna’s boyfriend is Mando’ad. His name, what was it? Fidele, or something like that, maybe, something that meant faithful.

The silver-girl laughs, head tipping back in a roar of laughter, for the Mando’ade laugh as hard as they scream, and he is lost. Her eyes are made violet by the purples and blues and creams of her dress, and he may not know what they mean or even who she is, but he knows a work of art when he sees one.

“Padawan, what do you stare at?”

“Oh, just an instinct reaction,” he blusters with a flush at Master Qui-Gon’s question, pulling his wings in tight. Instinct indeed, he snarls at himself, really? It’s a very good thing Master Qui-Gon doesn’t know the micro-signals wings carry, and an even better thing that this room is full of wingless species. A Jedi Padawan, losing his self-control at a pretty face? Scandalous.

Quinlan is going to give him so much shit but he needs the help.

“I need to talk to Quin,” he says shortly, not waiting for a response from his Master before casting a last not-quite-longing glance at the silver-girl as he marches away. People ooh and aah and calculate his worth as he moves, moving out of his path when they catch the fire of his eyes and the half-snarl of his lips and the threat threat challenge of his wings. Anyone who lays a hand on him loses the arm.

_FUCK I’m in love._

_Obi? It’s the middle of the damn night, what the hell dude._

_Quinlan I’m in love._

_You? Who is she?_

_I don’t know.  
_

Even from several systems away the sleep-soaked dyad is strong enough to let him sense that his brother has sat up, is moving little Aayla into Obi-Wan’s bed, hushing her into sleep. He moves into the kitchen, pouring cold coffee. _It’s five am, I might as well get up now, and nap with Aayla later._

_You’re a good dad._

_Tell me about your girl. Are you where I can come through?_

_Best not._

_Okay. Show me?  
_

A mere thought is enough to string the memory-connection up between them; he sighs wistfully as he remembers her smile, her eyes, the image of her laughing so joyfully. Quinlan can feel all his emotions, the shock-gasp-want of his Alpha side when he saw her, but nobody else can understand. Who else would he share this with? Not his Master, who doesn’t truly understand him, for all they have affection between them, not the rest of the flock who it is his duty to protect, not the Masters at the Temple who tell him his attachments are his detriment. Fionna would understand. Eion would. They are not here, but Quinlan is, and he is better than anyone.

_She’s beautiful, brother. What’s her name?_

_I have no idea, but she’s Mando. I can tell. She reminds me of the Jorad’alor, Duke Adonai Kryze.  
_

Old, slightly stale coffee stains his tastebuds, making him grimace as he is sure his dyad is grimacing. Whoever let Reeft use the coffeemaker is in for it come breakfast.

_Could she be his daughter? I think I remember Donal, or maybe Cei, telling me he had two daughters.  
Huh, maybe._

_You should go for it._

_What? No, that’s a horrible idea._

_Just ask her to dance! You’re really good at it, and you’re really cute, she’ll definitely say yes.  
_

He throws his hands up in exasperation. “I am not inviting her to dance with me, Quinlan,” he says indignantly, with as much finality in his tone as he can force over the yearning.

“Who?” asks a woman’s voice behind him, where the hall doors let onto the balcony. Obi-Wan yelps a Pechtish word meaning something more impolite than ‘sweet doors of deathly damnation’. She laughs, and he stares like a dying man met by an angel, drinking in the sound of her giggling at him – giggling! A Mando’ad who giggles, may wonders never cease. 

“Tion gar gai?”

“Your accent is atrocious,” she teases, but she smiles also, pleased in the Force and her face. His heart rockets through his sternum. “My name is Satine Kryze, of Clan Kryze.” 

“My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi, of Clan Gregor of Stewjon and of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.”

“A Jedi, how interesting,” muses Satine, eyes bright in badly hidden curiosity. 

_Fuck she’s talking to me!_

_Breathe Obi, you can do this._

_Right.  
_

“It has its moments,” admits the boy, remembering the time Quinlan tried to fly out of an Eyrie window and nearly died. “I, well, would you like a dance?” Courage is Jedi trait, but moreover a Stewjoni one. 

Satine’s entire face brightens as she draws herself up on her toes, flattered. “Of course,” exclaims his silver-girl, reaching out to take his hand with a speed which sets off his flight response. He lurches a step back, wings flaring out in instinctive alarm-danger, but he lurches a step too far, stumbles over the balcony, arms thrown wide. 

_QUINLAN VOS_ , he screams down the dyad furiously, even as he catches his beloved’s violet eyes widen in horror. 

_This is not my fault, this is on you. Land, brother. And maybe it’s a bit early for love._

_Shut it.  
_

Fortunately for him – and Satine, leaning horrified over the balustrade of golden-tinted stone – his wings bear his weight, catching the currents without too much flapping (but he is definitely going to feel this in the morning) and he manages to glide safely if unevenly down to the shadows of the garden, filled with huge many-petalled blooms in myriad colours. Panic fills her aura in the Force, quickly overwhelmed by something elated and gasping and headily awed as he lands heavily, staggering down to his knees with his copper wings flaring at full extension. Vanity is, perhaps, one of his flaws, for he holds the pose though his arms shake, letting Satine drink in the glory of his wings. 

_Vain._

_Shut up Quinlan._

“Are you alright?” 

“Am I alright? You fell off the karking balcony! Dini’la dinii. Can you come back up?” Satine asks, a touch anxiously. 

Good question. “No, not by flying. Why don’t you come here?”

She raises her fine brows. “The same way you did?”  
“I’ll catch you,” he promises, grinning, drinking her in the silver glint of her hair under the harsh lights of the hall. “I will! We do this at home all the time, we’re damn good. We haven’t got our flock parents to teach us to fly, which means we have had to get very good at catching each other in the Force.”

“You throw yourselves off balconies a lot?”

So-so, he mimes, not denying that they do sometimes hurl themselves from ledges. It’s instinctive, growing their wing musculoskeletal strength in any way needed. Sceptical, she nudges her boot off the stone curls, a gentle gust catching the soft fabric of her skirt and tossing it about. 

“Come down,” he whispers, all his breath stolen by the sheer majesty of her, up there above like a queen – like the Duchess she will be. 

Satine steps up, tucking her hair behind her ear, undaunted as a matter of honour, for she is Mando’ad, ad be Kryze. She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes at what he knows is the hot touch of the Force about her. 

“I trust you,” she tells him as she steps. Blue and purple and cream skirts float out about her, a descending angel blessing a mortal man, safe in his hold of the Force. Her boots touch down on the grass evenly, far softer than his own crash-landing, her chest heaving with the exhilaration of it all. Silvered hair floats about her head, setting the light to glinting in her eyes, off her purple shell earrings and the rings on her fingers when she tucks her hair back.

He’s very much fallen head over heels for her, possibly the very instant he saw first her across the room. Soft music floats down from the open doors to the banquet hall above them, goosebumps crawl over her revealed skin as she shiver in the breeze. Down here, out of the way of the sun, they are hidden from the eyes of man, free to dance under the sight of the stars as long as they dare remain absent.  
Duchess and Jedi, how delicious that scandal would be. 

Satine is about his height, but he still has some growing to do, and she fits against him very well. Ambitious for a first dance together, maybe, but he rather thinks that it won’t matter how well it works. Dancing is the sweetest form of seduction, who had told him so? Quinlan? No, he would have slipped straight to ‘having seduced your girl’. Perhaps it was Garen. Regardless of who said it, he finds it mildly ironic that he likely wouldn’t need the dance, with his beautiful wings and the strength he showed her in that serendipitous fall into the garden. Step step hold, he thinks, swaying into the beat, one two three four. Rumba is the dance of love, so dance like you’re in love; look at her like you’re in love, had instructed his tutor. No difficulty there, for him, his whole being leaning into her Force Signature, drinking her in. 

_So if you really love me, say yes  
But if you don’t dear, confess.  
_

Her lips are slightly parted, the soft creases about her lips and eyes speaking of a habit of laughter as strong as the habit of frowning hinted at. Their breaths mingle between them. 

_Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What d'you think of that, then?
> 
> Tion gar gai? What is your name?   
> Dini'la dinii: insane lunatic
> 
> Who taught Obi-Wan to dance? Either Dooku or one of his kin. Haven't decided yet.


	2. First Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hesitantly, his beautiful girl brushes her lips to his, the barest hint of a kiss, flushing gently in the golden glow of twilight. “Thank you.”
> 
> “Not here, Satine,” he almost purrs, “I don’t want our first kiss here, like this.”
> 
> “First? You say that like there will be a second.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tw for dancing for money, unwillingly. Well. He chooses it, but he hates it. No implied or even referenced sexual content. :)

Living hand to mouth is hard. Master Qui-Gon is not unkind, is not uncaring, but he is perhaps thoughtless regarding the fact his ward and the girl they’re guarding are still growing, that they need more regular meals than they can get on the run from a civil war. Oh, he has his ways, with sabacc and physical labour, but it is Obi-Wan who brings in the most money, when the times are right and desperation to go home is driving him, when none of Qui-Gon’s insistences are enough to override the craving for green things and fresh meat. There is too little for him to hunt here, unless he wishes to attract the wrong attention. 

_I hate this._

_I know, my heart, but you will come home soon. We’ll be safe._

_How can I protect anyone like this?_

_By surviving._

_This makes me sick._

_Vent it to the Force, brother. I’m with you._

_Fuck, I wish you didn’t have to see this._

_I wish you didn’t have to do it, but I’m going to stay._

_I know. Labour of love, right?_

_Does she know?_

_Force, she better,_ he grumbles, adjusting the lie of the fabric shimmering about his waist. Though it sickens him to bare his skin so, his blue tattoos up his right arm, and he feels the phantom weight of collars about his neck wrists ankles from being twelve and a child and sold, he breathes through the anxiety. 

He has to. 

This is for her. If he remembers that, if he just focuses on her, Satine, silver hair and violet-hued eyes and smooth curves of bone and muscle sharpened by months of hunger, he can do these demeaning acts.  
Only a dance, a public dance like back home when he gives a demonstration. Singing would bring even more credits, but he would be kidnapped for certain, and no song of Depur or slavery will pass his tongue. He is Alexander Mac Gregor, protector of men, of the Eagle Clan in the Great Glen: he is not a slave. He is Padawan Learner Obi-Wan Kenobi, shrouded by wing and prophecy, and he is not a slave. 

A dance now, in the dusk when his wings glow and he truly appears an angel, with the shimmering whatever-this-is that Satine found, will bring enough credits for him to eat.   
Force, he is so hungry. 

_You have to eat more, you should not have taken this mission._

_I love her._

_She’s going to kill you.  
_

When he is cold and hungering for a hunt in the predawn dark, stars sparkling over the heavens, arcing endlessly above, he can almost imagine he is home on a hunt with his sister, than he can turn and see his brothers, that his mother and father will give them their marching orders with a soft hand on his shoulder and dried lips brushed over his brow. Then, inevitably, Satine shivers awake and presses closer to him for heat, or they must walk and walk and walk because to use the public transport would be to risk recognition and there is no money for a mount of any description.   
“You don’t have to,” Satine whispers, laying her hand on his arm gingerly, as if he doesn’t cuddle her close in the night, as if she hasn’t got blanket permission to touch him and preen his wings. “I could do it.”

His lips twist, a wry smile that says he knows and he’s sorry and he’s not backing down. “I need to eat, darling,” he croons, taking her hands in his, “and my wings require me to eat three times what you do.” Mando’ade do not have smooth skin, but hers is toughened before its time by the stress of the last three months on the run whilst her home system suffers. If only they’d been able to get to Stewjon straight away – 

No. He must not dwell. 

“Hey, what do I keep saying?” 

“We’re together, and we have the Force, so we’re okay,” she recites, tipping her head into his in that very Mando expression of affection, watching his eyes. How very effortlessly she steals his breath, send his heart arrhythmic with her beauty, even now, tattered and thinning. Seventeen years old, and they are adults on Mandalore but children to the Pecht, living a life of struggle. “You miss your family.”

He stares off at the distant hills, knowing his expression is blanked, but feeling too much. 

_Every damn day._

_I’ll give you a few minutes. Let me know when to come back._

_I miss you all so much._

_Yeah, we miss you, Alpha. It isn’t the same. Bant has stepped up, but she isn’t you.  
_

“Every damn day, I miss them. I miss them like I would miss the sun, and the feel of air, and the beat of my heart, and the Force, and my wings. Without them I am untethered.”

“That’s horrible,” she breathes, hot on his collarbone. Now is not the time. Now is not the time. On an exhale, ruffling her hair for she is so close and he is wearing so very little her body heat sinks into him, he releases the emotions, the wanting. Next time they find a haven he must meditate. Please, Mother of Earth and Ar-Amu Mother of the Oppressed, let them find a way to Stewjon tomorrow at the port. “Ander?” 

“Mm?” 

“Look at me,” she pleads, her hands hot on his face and chest, “look at me.”

If he looks at her now, she is all he will see when he dances. If he looks at her now, he is afraid she will be tainted – she is a Duchess, and she should not ever be demeaned, and to hold her in his mind’s eye as he dances for credits feels demeaning. But she holds his will in her hands and she wishes for him to look at her, and so he does, and he is lost.

Poems of his homeworld tell of men made slaves by a woman’s eyes, of Queens brought low by men with silvered tongues, of wings plucked bare by lovers. They all sing of becoming lost. He is lost. 

“Thank you. Without you – I would be dead,” she admits, curling her hand about his jaw, and he must be melting in the heat she emits. Hesitantly, his beautiful girl brushes her lips to his, the barest hint of a kiss, flushing gently in the golden glow of twilight. “Thank you.”

“Not here, Satine,” he almost purrs, “I don’t want our first kiss here, like this.”

“First? You say that like there will be a second.”

“And a third, and fifth, and twentieth,” says the boy into her ear, smug at her gasp. Without him noticing, his wide wings have come to wrap around them, protecting her from any prying eyes, not that there are any here in the empty field by the river, keeping this moment very private. It breaks his heart to leave her, step away into the cold of the night, but it must be done. He is too hungry not to go into the town and dance, to flaunt his wings and body for money. 

_Come back, help me._

_Oh, brother. I wish she hadn’t._

_Me too.  
_  
“I will be back soon. Stay out of sight.”

Shaken, still flushed, she nods, staring after him as he leaves her standing on the bank, the setting sun painting the sky behind her gentle turquoise, but he does not look back, will not look back at his angel-without-wings, for he knows he will go back. Those eyes burn his bared skin. 

The dance he does is more like a kata, really, all arced kicks and flared wings and unnatural stretches, but he can see his reflection in the windows of the square; he looks like a warrior brought low. He has twisted his padawan braid into a small coil at his temple, tucked a few delicate blue flowers into it to bring out his eyes. Sickening himself, he traces the lines of his life-tattoos, dancing them: leaps, plunges, sweeping flutters of his wings, leaning back as far as his deprived muscles can handle. Coins and chips scatter about his feet and he dances delicately over them as if they’re sensor-pads in the training games all initiates play as younglings learning their feet. Eyes scald him, weigh him, peel off what little he is wearing and he hates it. 

_You look good, shouldn’t take long now._

_I need enough, though._

_You almost do._

_Okay._

_One more kata and we’re good._

_What if someone recognises them as, you know, katas not dances?_

_Stewjoni are warriors. They won’t care. They’re too busy prying you apart._

_I hate this._

_I know.  
_

He hears voices talk about him – his strength – his wings, always his wings, as if by dint of being different he is somehow objectified into something sexual in their eyes. As if he is lesser. 

As if he is _valuable._

_I’m done._

_Good.  
_

With Quinlan’s fierce protectiveness in the back of his mind, he collects the dusty cred-chips, pleased to see that there’s enough there for him to truly eat next time they reach a village. If they start walking tonight, they’ll be there by dawn.

It feels like the heated stares of those watching him stick to the sweat on his back. 

He wishes she hadn’t kissed him. He feels like he’s devalued it.


	3. Trapped in a crash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Regrettably, this is not their first rodeo in a crash. Ideally, he would be able to say he has a lid on the situation, that he can control the descent and they’ll be absolutely fine. It would be a lie.
> 
> (I do apologise for any confusion caused by my reordering the chapters as often as I do; but I prefer the chapters to be chronological.)

Regrettably, this is not their first rodeo in a crash. Ideally, he would be able to say he has a lid on the situation, that he can control the descent and they’ll be absolutely fine. It would be a lie.

“Ander, my darling, do tell me we’re going to land safely,” grits Satine, not taking her eyes from the far-too-rapidly approaching surface of Eiru, which is two planets too far from where they’re meant to be.  
He just cannot catch a fucking break.

“My sweet, I’d love to,” he grinds out, “but no. No, we’re not landing safely.”

_Yo Quin, get in touch with someone with transport, and tell them we’re on the Equatorial region of Eiru._

_Oh no._

_Yeah. Master Qui-Gon should be fine, apart from him being completely and totally out of it._

_Why?_

_Tell you when I get home._

_Right._ Quinlan hasn’t even half-closed the connection before he is sprinting for help, shouting for Master Tholme and Bant, the echoes resounding through Obi-Wan's skull but quickly repressed. 

“Um, my dear -”

“I see it.”

“Alexander!” 

If he could spare the millisecond to glare, he would, but there are spires of hexagonal rocks reaching out of the cliffs towards the malfunctioning shuttle, and they’re going to die if he careful. Satine can’t die: he loves her; but even more importantly, she is the last symbol of unity for the Madalorian system and all its dependents and associates, which does include Stewjon’s system. 

“Warning: impact imminent,” blares the far-too controlled voice of the automated alarm system. The nearest settlement is a fifteen-hour walk, he knows from his studies. Neither of them will have a chance.  
Excellent. About to die, and their only chance to survive is his maverick of a Master currently in a healing trance/medical coma. The engines stop with terrifying, sudden silence. 

That’s the thing about engines. You don’t hear them until they’re gone. 

“Satine, get down – down, now, hurry,” he shouts, hurling her ahead of him into the passage behind the cockpit as the spires give way to barren grey rock dusted in yellow sand, collapsing over her as they scream and the front of the shuttle shatters and they are pelted with rocks and the only thing keeping them alive is the Force - 

“Ander,” she chokes, grasping the back of his neck as his eyes blur shut under the onslaught of agony from his wing.

“I think it might be our only choice.”

“Master Jinn -”

A familiar sigh. “Don’t think me unaware of the severity of this situation, my dear. Obi-Wan requires immediate medical assistance. I believe I can get help here in the next fifteen hours.”

“I really don’t -”

“’Tine. S’okay. ‘ll be fine, go ge’ help,” he manages to croak, his words slurred together and yep that’s definitely a concussion, he’s keeping his eyes tight shut thank you.

_What... What?_

_You crash-landed on Eiru._

_Huh._

_With Satine._

_Yep._

_I’ve been told to wait and ask you if we need to send you help.  
_

Oh. He is rather far from the Temple. From any Temple, in fact.

_No, I think we’ll be okay. You wouldn’t get here in time anyway. I’m only two planets off anyway, I can get home._

_Well, I don’t like it, but okay. You have a really nasty concussion and possibly a broken wingbone._

_Well, shit.  
_

“Obi-Wan?”

“S’rry, Masser, concussion.”

Master Qui-Gon lays a huge hand over his forehead, threading the Living Force through the pain to alleviate the worst of the damage. Force Healing techniques will save his life here, he knows. Shock would have killed him without Quinlan protecting him, blood loss if he hadn’t had Master Qui-Gon to heal his open head wound and the very nasty wounds down his wings that fucking butched, but secondary infections caused more deaths than anything else really. The lull in the throbbing balls of pain scattered indiscriminately over his body sends him slowly to sleep again.

“Wake him every four hours at the longest.” 

“Alright. Travel safely, Master Jinn.”

Eion is coming for them. There is no way to explain to a non-Force Sensitive how it is that he knows, maybe not even words to explain to his Master, yet his conviction remains that rescue is coming and will not be late. It was no vision, no dream, no sign through a bond, but he knows in his blood that his brother is coming. The two grounded teens are sat on the warm rock under the shelter of what’s left of their shuttle. Obi-Wan has had plenty of time to mull certain topics over in an attempt to take his mind of his roughly splinted wing. There is no way he can move any further than to shuffle around the remains of the crashed shell, even if his life depends on it (which well may be the case).

“Why don’t you speak?” he asks abruptly. 

“I’m sorry?”

“You don’t speak,” Obi-Wan tells her seriously, “This, my heart, is going to sound unbearably callous, but please, hear me. You are now the Duchess Kryze, Jorad’alor, the voice of your people. With your words you can fight more battles than I can ever hope to avert, and win.”

“I... I suppose I could,” Satine agrees slowly, tipping her head to the side with her eyes squinted. 

“Slap your words in the face of all who would repress the Mando’ade, Satine. Put your insistence that change must come everywhere. The soul is grown by war but peace makes it bloom, right?”

“That’s a Mando’a phrase,” Satine points out a little suspiciously. Evidently his concussion isn’t helping him get his point across. 

“We have a similar few. Soul untested, soul unproven; heart unbroken, heart unworn. A spear raised is a spear unused. Peace is the child of conflict. You have the words, Satine,” he says, meeting her gaze full-on, trying to push his faith into her very being with all his senses. “You have their ears. Make them listen.”

“We have no Mand’alor.”

Grey-washed eyes bore into blue, their connection – he strength of his conviction – flaring between them. Satine feels a flush rise from her stomach.

“Do you need one?”

“That’s treason. Worse than treason. The Mand’alor is lost.”

Obi-Wan shrugs. “Then let’s find him.”

She laughs incredulously. “You’re broken, Alexander.”

“So we get him when I’m better,” he insists. His girl shakes her head, red-brown dyed hair tossing about her jaw. 

“How will we find him?”

“I know people. Quinlan knows people. Between us we know plenty of people,” he tells her very seriously, cracking the slightest grin at her huff. She calls him irascible, when he gets like this, but he knows she loves it. She loves him. “Satine?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

She flushes properly, her freckles standing out over her sharp cheekbones. “You too.”

Her hand is small and rough in his. “Good then,” he says as he leans back on the slightly too-warm iron, tugging her into his less injured side, “good.”

“Good. Go to sleep.”

“I don’t want to sleep. Want to stay awake and kiss you.”

“No,” she orders. He can hear her smile in her voice. “You’re all bloody.”

“After then, when Eion is here and I’m cleaned up,” he pushes. Satine says nothing, pressing her lips to his chest and squeezing his hand.

“I’m not having my first impression be of some shameless hussy.”

That makes him laugh. “Come on now, they’re not that bad.”

“They’re your parents, I have to make a good impression!”

“”S’only Eion, he probably already knows everything about us.”

Satine looks uncomfortable, confused. “Everything?”

“Unless I tell him not to,” he confirms neutrally. 

“How...how connected are you to your blood-family?” 

“They are my family,” he says, knowing she must not doubt that – he has a large family, and they are his, his. “You’ll like them.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah,” Satine says, tucking her head against him so they can watch the sky for the approaching shuttle. “Okay.”


	4. Wild and Free

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is the wildest night of the year, and Satine is not unaware of the honour paid to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Horror and the Wild by The Amazing Devil, go listen, no I will not stop telling you all to listen to them

She laughs like she’s being whirled into a world she never considered could have existed – and, he supposes, maybe that’s exactly what this is. His Clan, high on the mountain’s peak in the thin air, with the entire world spreading around them and the entire galaxy above, and the enormous fire roaring hot enough to stave of the chill. The Lochs glint in the bright night-light, promising freedom. 

“What’s happening?”

Eion grins, flushed and wilded by the high of tonight. Their festival of thanks. “A song, little Duchess.”

His sister tugs Obi-Wan by the hand after her, close to the fire where the heat singes their skin and sparks pass too-close to their feathers. One of the old women picks up her fiddle, and the first notes wind over the roar of the bonfire up into the galaxy. “Sing with me!”

He laughs with his sister, nodding, twirling about beneath her as she and Eion take to the air. He knows this song, the lyrics of it in Basic, and knows with the gift he and his older siblings carry that they’re singing the Basic version – for Satine’s benefit. He knows his beloved is not ignorant of the compliment they’re paying her, here under the sky on the night of dancing and song. 

“You were raised by wolves and voices!”

“Every night I hear them howling,”

“-deep beneath your bed!”

Under his boots the ground trembles, the drums and fiddles filling his blood with the power of music and the fire of being alive, and in the break of the instruments he breathes out his lines with his eyes fixed on her face, the bonfire roaring at his back like it contains the Force itself. This is their dance, their song, his brother and sister and himself, singing of beings contained in mortal bodies, with the wail of the stringed instruments lending his wings the strength to burst into the air beside his sister, and he finds himself longing for the day when he is grown. To fly over the flames, filling the mountaintop with his voice and his love of his people and family and her with the Force singing back to him; it is all that he craves. His people rise and dance too, whirling and clapping and howling up to the moon now it has risen full overhead, screaming to the skies. Eion and Fionna trace a helix over the reaching flames, yet he can see the space where he should be, a triumvirate, and a little space for the lost twin he has no recollection, the one who fell and is no more. Witness, they order, watch as we belt out our vivality to all of you who listen. 

Their people are as one voice and his bond to Quin is thrown wide open, and it is good. 

“Duchess Kryze?”

Satine looks up into the face of a man with the lily of Mandalore tattooed onto his shoulder, a mythosaur on his bicep, with little blue swirls beginning to twist up his wrist, outstretched to her in Mando style. “Yes.”

He smiles. “My name is Fidele, of House Mereel.”

Oh. “I am so sorry,” she says sincerely. Fidele quips a grin, rueful and regretting and yet not quite so brokenhearted as her own smiles have been. 

“It is how it is, Jorad’alor.” The man sits beside her gently, watching the three ade of the Chief dance with some of the other clansmen. It’s a dance of clapping and spinning, dizzying to watch, and she’s tired out just watching their energy. 

She tips her head, accepting his point, but presses her fist to her heart in acknowledgement of the blow paid to his Clan. Both the Mand’alor Mereel and the Jorad’alor Kryze dead, and she running away from the Death Watch. Like some cowardly child. “What are you doing here, if I may ask?”

“I’m engaged to Fionna,” he says with a smile, watching her twirl her twin until both copper-tinted children of the sky fall to the ground, breathless with joy. “I am still Mando’ad, but I am also sworn to these people.” 

Satine considers, watching as her Obi-Wan takes the hand of a young woman with blonde wings, letting her pull him into yet another reel. He tips his head back and sings, braid whipping with the motions of the kicks, wings snapping in unison with those of the others in the set. “They’re a good people to be sworn to.”

Her companion smiles, watching them, and for a moment she is willing to forget the pain of her own system for the hours of freedom provided by this people who fly with the wind and scream into the dark their songs of defiance and being alive. “Aren’t they,” he agrees. Fionna, her wings broad and powerful and shining like wet rust in the fire and moonlight, runs over, pushing loose tendrils of hair up into her bun.

“Satine, Fidele. Come, dance,” she orders, taking their hands and yanking them over the stony ground to the throng of spinning dancers who hoot and yelp as the music draws to a finish. “The willow! Play us the willow!”

Her choice is met by bellows of agreement, and Satine finds herself face-to-face with Ander, Master Jinn faced with an older woman a few couples down from them. They have formed two lines, the men facing the women. Expectation fills the air, faces flushed by drink and dance and song, and she bounces on her toes unsure of the steps. 

“It’s a spinning one,” Ander tells her, his blue eyes grey in the firelight and copper wings magnificent. “You spin your right arm with me, and others on your left, and it makes a continuous line – right, left – and we work down the set. See, they’re started.”

And indeed they have, the watching audience clapping the beat and whooping, and she realises it’s similar to the pounding dance her own people do at the harvest-season whether they have a harvest or not. Life which continues despite. 

Fionna climbs up onto a cart, and Satine has the sudden realisation that she hasn’t seen any horses or oxen up here, and she wonders how it is they got everything up here, but the Leader is speaking. “My people! Forgive me, but I give my speech in Basic out of respect for our friend the Jorad’alor who we have given shelter to.” The people raise their drinks, a low call of support echoing; she bows, dragged down to sit with Ander once more. “And of course my beloved Fidele.”

A chorus of bawdier cheers, the words easy enough to parse without any knowledge of Gaelic. Some gestures are universal indeed. 

“Silence, my heart, silence. Tonight we give thanks. To my brothers, the Seer and the Protector. May your wings ever fly strong and our paths always wind together!”

Eion stands next. “To tonight, a gift and blessing from our mother; to our freedom.”

Ander stands too. “To you, my hearts and soul, and to that which binds us together and gives me my insights.”

Then the blonde woman she saw earlier, her daughters curled against her sides. “My daughters, Aria and Felicity.” 

A tall man with curling dark hair and vibrantly green eyes. “To the flock.”

“To the stars, the sea and the sky, to the drums and the strings,” and oh, she realises, this is a chant, a blessing. Her Ander starts the hum, the tune catching through the throng of winged people, curling between them like the song of a hive of bees. Fidele rises to his feet, clapping his hand to his chest and bowing to her. 

“To peace.”

“To freedom, unity, and remembrance,” Satine echoes. “Oya Manda, oya vode.”

“K’oyaci,” calls Fionna, and the word rises up, shouts in many languages – most of which she doesn’t understand – floating high up, rising in volume.

When the chorus stops, the humming remains, and Chief Donal takes his daughter’s place. “May our blades ever be sharp and strong, may our stoops be swift, may our arms remain sturdy.”

The humming intensifies, melodies developing, and the bagpipes start up again. Ander whispers to her, “This is a chant of goodwill. It is what we sing to mark change, such as marriage, birth, death. And of course this night.”

“And what is this night?” 

He smiles, raising his cup towards Master Jinn who smiles peacefully back. “It is freedom.”

Satine tilts her head towards him, and wonders how it is a people who are always so ready to raise their weapons can also be so determined to never reach that point. A spear raised is a spear unused, she recalls her sweetheart telling her as they sheltered in the wake of the crash on Eiru, and suddenly she understands. It hits her like the heat of the fire, or a gust of wing-blown mountain night air. War she knows brings grief; only the rash would long for battle, for the glory gained from death and conquest. This is then where their two – or three, he is as Jedi as he is Stewjoni or more – cultures divide, in the nuance between growing in war and growing beyond it. “Freedom,” she agrees, and drinks.


	5. If there's one thing I'm good at...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Shh, love.”
> 
> She whimpered, barely more than a breath, but he smirked into her neck. He’d felt it, the full-body shiver...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I tried but my ace brain went "right this is done now" so it's. Not quite smut. But almost. Dammit Siri.  
> But then again Obi-Wan and Satine definitely know better than to be getting it on in an empty room at a fancy party.

“Shh, love.”

She whimpered, barely more than a breath, but he smirked into her neck. He’d felt it, the full-body shiver as his fingers sank into her; the gasp when he pushed with the Force into the air around them to hide them, just enough pressure for her to feel it in her teeth like a thunderstorm. Outside, the rain fell, and fell, and fell. Time, space, everything had been boiled under his intensity and her lust to nothing beyond the extent of their bodyheat. Unwise perhaps, yet so tantalising. 

“Don’t you dare,” she gasped as his hand drifted from her hair to her throat. Snickering inaudibly – she only knew he did so by the heat of his breath on her jaw – he pressed, just so into the divot of her collar, holding his fingers in the hollow there only for a second, two seconds, before continuing the slow slide down her body. She sighed, slipping dangerously close to deciding to pull him closed and to hells with the consequences. 

“No marks, my love?”

“Not in this dress.”

He sighed into her neck, tilting his head to watch the slow twist of his hand, his hair brushing warm and soft against her cheek. “Perhaps I should mark you anyway. In my culture, it would be expected.”

“If we lived by your birth culture you’d have put a child in me years ago,” she teased, knowing what it would do – knowing that the reference to his biological desire for children as she stroked a firm hand down the sensitive range of his wing would drive him near-insane. 

Panting hot against her cheek, he drew away, smirking at her gasp at the cold air against her breast. “My sweet, if it were my choice, you’d give me a child every summer.”

“Fuck you.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Ander, don’t draw away – Obi-Wan!”

He laughed at her pouting, petting her hair as he licked his hand clean, using the Force to fend her off when she grabbed at him to pull him closer. “You need to cool down, so you can go out there and give your speech.”

“I don’t want to,” she insisted. 

“Sadly, if I’m missing any longer, my friends are going to come looking for us, and for both our sakes we don’t want that.”

She groaned. For all she loved him – and she did, truly she did – his friends were pure chaos who brought out the very worst of her. That, and she was pretty sure Siri hated her. “You best make this up to me tonight,” she ordered, flexing her fingers against his copper-fire wings. 

The fire in his eyes flared her own, higher and higher, leaving her wanting nothing more than to sink her teeth into his lip and feel his muscles move over her, his hands hot on her body. “My darling,” he purred, “if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s-”

Just as she was certain he’d kiss her properly, this time, not the sweet peck from earlier or teasing brush from the start of their admittedly ill-timed tryst in the empty meeting room, someone pounded the door. 

“Fuck’s sake, you two, keep it in your pants until we get out on the lash, will you?”

“Real mature, Siri,” drawled Garen. 

_Come on, lovebirds._

_Really. Really Gar. You’d do this to me, your dear friend, your brother?_

_Yep._

_Damn you._

_You love me.  
_

“You’re about to be noticed missing, Obi, so you either blame this on a smoke break and risk the Face of Disappointment from the Masters for taking up the deathsticks again or you pretend you haven’t been snogging a Senator and risk the Face of Disappointment,” Siri continued. Hurriedly straightening each other up, Satine glared at the door, her embarrassment leaning into the Force under Obi-Wan’s shields. He dropped a last kiss to her lips, a promise of the night ahead. 

“She doesn’t hate you,” he breathed apologetically, but they knew she did – superficially, at least, Siri held only bitterness towards Satine for the harm done to Obi-Wan. Given the chance she’d pack Satine back to the Mandalore system in a wooden crate. 

Humming wryly, she finished straightening her skirts. “Why are you looking at me like that?” 

“You’re beautiful,” he breathed, cradling her cheek in his hand. “So strong, and kind, and you can be so sexy when you want to be.”

Satine arced an eyebrow. 

“Alright, alright,” he conceded, “I always want you. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

She sniffed mock-haughtily. “I suppose it will do as a start.”

Someone rapped on the door. “Oi, I’m not covering your sorry ass when you get caught in there.”

“Leave off, Gar.” 

“You’re twenty-three!”

Obi-Wan threw open the door, giving Garen the driest look he could muster. “I know. Now shove off, or you’re paying tonight,” he ordered with a grin. His friend rolled his eyes, but left, tugging Siri with him. “Duchess, may I accompany you to the snack table?”

“I suppose so, for appearances,” she smiled, pale hair and pale eyes ethereal in the low light. Outside, the rain fell, and fell, and fell.


	6. Gala

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Across the crowded floor, he sees her, and he is immediately once more sixteen-almost-seventeen, an untested teenager who fell from a balcony, captivated by her strong shoulders and the arc of her neck. Here, at this fancy gala, she wears another backless dress, jewels of all shades dripping down her silken dress – opaline, is the word for it, colours striking into each other in combinations that should be unnatural but that fit.

Across the crowded floor, he sees her, and he is immediately once more sixteen-almost-seventeen, an untested teenager who fell from a balcony, captivated by her strong shoulders and the arc of her neck. Here, at this fancy gala, she wears another backless dress, jewels of all shades dripping down her silken dress – opaline, is the word for it, colours striking into each other in combinations that should be unnatural but that fit. Grief, mourning, justice, lust for peace. 

“See something you like, Master?” 

“Anakin, you are incorrigible,” he scolds his wayward young apprentice, presses his wings down into Jedi-controlled-serenity just in case someone other than his family reads the traces of love-want-need in his wings. War has raged this last seven months like a solar storm, and oh, how he regrets understanding all the visions his Kin have suffered for decades. It feels like he hasn’t breathed since before Geonosis, and he certainly can’t breathe now. She’s punched him in the kidney just by existing. 

“Who have you seen, though?” 

“It doesn’t matter to you,” he tells Anakin, and then acting on a rather rash impulse he turns to face Anakin head-on. “Don’t get into trouble, be home by two, and don’t wait up for me,” he instructs, mind skipping ahead because this is a chance, the first in too long, and she is right there. 

“What?” 

“Don’t sound so startled, Anakin. You’re no longer a child, are you? I trust you to go safely home with Quin and Aayla.” 

His son’s Signature flashes rose-bright in pleasure at hearing his trust. Somewhere, he feels a little bad for it, sending his boy out into the hum of Senators to fend for himself, but hey. Galactic war has already been declared, and if he wants to spend a night getting drunk in his riduur’s bed, he will. Anakin is in his twenties now, for goodness’ sakes; he is a strong and capable young man who Obi-Wan is prouder of than he has the words to express. On impulse, some deep tug of the Force in his gut, he allows the fire of love to dilute down their bond like smoke, feeling Anakin preen at the swelling emotion. His son responds with a sharp stab of gratitude and affection before turning away to find his cousin in the crowd. 

“Master Kenobi,” calls one of the Senators he’s had dealings with over the last few years. They spend a very pleasant short conversation exchanging updates on their children, on how things have been going, saying much and nothing in true politician’s capability, before Obi-Wan makes some excuse and slips away, following the entrancing glitter of his wife’s gown across the room. 

She flits away, always just one conversation and ten steps ahead. Surely, he wonders, she would not torment him so; but she would, he knows it, she confirms it with a coy glance and flick of her fingers. With a flick of her hair, Satine tips back her head and laughs at some quip or quibble, and he knows, knows she did that deliberately. Muscle ripples down her shoulders, far leaner and sharper than when they were children and now, as they start to age – and they are – beginning to lose the firmness of skin. She looks like an angel, a saint in flesh, the very fabric of dreams made real, tangible. 

Obi-Wan inserts himself seamlessly into the gaggle of Senators and partners, met by laughter and how-are-you and aren’t-you-glad-to-rest, to which he assures them his work is never done, that he is a Jedi and cannot allow justice and the Light to be shadowed by the War. He meets Satine’s bright eyes with a rakish smirk. “My Lady Duchess.” 

“Master Jedi,” she answers, allowing him to kiss her hand. “It is a pleasure to see you again.” 

Their companions watch the conversation with keen eyes; certain rings of society gossip over the Mandalorian Duchess and her uncertain relationship with the Stewjoni Jedi as regularly as they eat cakes and drink fine tea. He hopes tonight doesn’t become one of their little stories. “The pleasure is mine,” he assures her, and one sniggers, a Senator who’s been around as long as he can remember and certainly remembers that he and Satine are very familiar. “If I may, Duchess, I require a word with you on a matter of Mandalore.” 

She sobers immediately, tucking her hand into his elbow with ease as she makes her excuses. “But of course, yes. I received a report from a Clan on the edge of the system,” she begins, and he leads her to an exit he knows won’t be noticed as she speaks on things she’s already told him, throwing any listeners off the scent. 

Have fun, brother, teases Quinlan, to which he responds by shutting the bond with a spark of amusement. 

Once out of earshot of the assembly behind them, he gives in to impulse and seeps her into his arms, wings flaring in counter-balance as she laughs and snatches her skirts up. She wraps her arm about his neck, sighing into his neck; he purrs, content now, more at peace than he has been since before Geonosis. They’re together once more. “Where are your rooms?” 

“Three levels up, and pribate,” answers Satine with a wink. “We do need to talk politics, first. And then you’re going to show me your new scars.” 

He shifts her weight so she can pull the door to the lift open, and steps in, letting Satine press the button. They stand in peaceful silence for a moment, just sharing in each others’ existence and grateful to still have each other. “It has been a long year,” he says quietly. 

“Yes,” Satine agrees. “Mand’alor Fett is recovered well, so my reports say, ready to get out and start shouting at the Senate.” 

“Stars have mercy on them.” 

She huffs. “The Stars better not, I will have none.” She points at her door, and he sets her to her feet so she can let them in, wrapping himself around her, wings a wall behind them. 

“You smell nice,” he whispers, nosing behind her ear. “Like lilies.” 

“I think that’s enough politics,” his beautiful wife tells him and kicks the door shut behind them, “carry me to bed, riduur.”


	7. Work - Love balance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which they dance, again, and Obi-Wan sings to his woman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a prompt? I'm working on the smut but it won't write so uh. If any of y'all want to write them some smut. Do. Because he has wings and I feel like that's an underused smut-pertunity.

Slow music and Padmé’s voice fill the room, a private event for those who have attachments they should not have. Bly and Aayla dance slowly to the song, tears brimming in his eyes – not all the men have such gentle faces, or are prone to displays of emotion. 

“Take my hand,” says Satine with the song, gently leading him out to the center of the room where the chairs have been shuffled to make space for those who wish to dance. Her hand fits in his, calloused and dry, her eyes soft. No communication is needed for them to dance perfectly together, a simple waltz from Stewjon which allows for wings to be a part of the movements, soft brushes and flares indicating love-devotion-adoration. 

“Should I stay, would it be a sin? I can’t help falling in love with you,” he sings softly, so softly, for her only, unable to tear his eyes away, just as he was the first time they danced in the cold dark garden under the balcony. They are falling into each other, and he knows his face is betraying all that he feels to those who may look (and he knows his children will look); he is fallen long ago with no wish to pull himself out of the pale shine of her eyes back into the loneliness of nothing. She is his, in all that matters, and he knows it deep in his soul. Intrinsic. 

Her soft lips brush his, just, almost, more the hint of a kiss, how he runs his lips over his daughter’s cheek or Siri’s hand or Anakin’s head as he leaves to work. Attachment is not the way of the Jedi – or even of his Clan, living so high, where life is won by the season, where success is not a guarantee. 

Given the chance, he would secrete her away with the rest of his kin, far from all that would harm them, but what life is that of a gilded cage? He has suffered for her. Perhaps he will suffer again. 

Their lips meet as the violin mourns love lost. 

“I have to return in three days,” breathes Obi-Wan into her hair, as they sway to the slow sad songs. Worlds keep turning, burning, falling and being reclaimed and rebuilt, and their love falls with them, turning in seasons. 

“It is duty,” she says into his neck, “I love you.”

Surely his heart is beating time with hers now, this grief of what they cannot have heavy between them, near tangible. “I give to you all that which is mine to give,” he vows, smiling, closing his eyes against the reality of it all. Perhaps with their eyes closed they are Ander and Satine again, just two people dancing because they are in love. There is nobody watching who they do not want to watch. There is nobody watching at all, and they are two young people dancing in the rain, whispering their wedding vows to nobody but each other. Maybe he can’t give her his everything, or all of his heart, just as she cannot give him every part of her, and it is good. They galaxy needs them still. The Clones need her and Fett; the Jedi need him and the Clones. But not tonight. 

Not tonight. Just once, this once, they are together and they have no fears – who here would bring them harm? Who of Padmé and Satine and Bail, of Bly or Cody or Fox, of the Flock would dream of doing harm? If they want to kiss on the dance floor they will; if he wants to tuck Satine into his side he will; if they hold hands all night so be it. He will dream that this idyll will last, that they could take the chance and simply be together, free from duty to go to theatre and have kids and watch Anakin hone his strength in the same ridiculous aerobatic feats his father is known for. 

The song ends, a new one begins. A rumba, their first dance, to their song; their love smoulders between them, hanging in the Force like perfume, sinking from the simple connection of love long-lived into the sultriness so often a result of dancing.   
Dancing is, after all, the prelude to seduction.


	8. Lover's Quarrel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Referenced smut but.... No actual smut. I'm not good at this. I get all "ahhhhh they kissed!!" and then the smut doesn't get written. Maybe I need to outsource it.

"You can’t.”

“Satine, please,” he pleads, reaching for her, “I cannot leave this matter.”

She turns on him, finger raised threateningly. “You expect me to hold my peace as I watch you take this – this- suicide mission! How could I, my love? How could I?” Tears sparkle in her eyes made green by the light lancing through the green vines crawling up the window frames in her room, three floors below Padmé’s apartment. “I watch you give, and give, and give, and no matter what anyone gives back to you it will never be equal because you’re just so damn selfless.”

Inhale, exhale, he thinks, in then out to find his center. Her skin glows under the light, hair fluffed messily – she does, if he is honest, look thoroughly fucked, which he is viscerally proud of, but which is not the focus of this discussion. This is one argument he can’t soothe with his love, with the protection of his wings curved above them on her bed, with the promises of all that is his to give and the distractions of the flesh. 

“Do you remember? The Kyr’stad are a rot, disease, a virus, and it is my pleasure as well as my duty to stamp them out,” he says, drawing close to her, cradling her in one wing until she is drawn flush against his chest, skin-to-skin, nothing between them but the heavy knowledge of what this next mission entails. How many years has it been? Nine, it must be, or nine coming on ten, since he led the rout of the Kyr’stad on as many worlds as they could reach before the Republic’s attempt at law enforcement (read: the Jedi) had finally caught up with them. Eight years since the whispers that Obi-Wan Kenobi was less a Knight and more a Rogue Warrior of ancient tales. Six years since the Kyr’stad raised their heads and were abolished, brutally, by the people they claimed to want to save. Three years since he found the clones of the Mand’alor and understood just what those visions of Eion’s so long ago meant. 

“It should not be your duty. They should not be ordering you to destroy,” she hisses. 

“No. But I am going, as a Jedi and as Protector.” 

“I do so wish you would not,” his wife says unhappily into his neck, tucked against him – how fragile she feels, of a sudden, entirely hidden by the expanse of his wing. Is this what they are reduced to? Arguing over the right and wrong of a mission he cannot and would not refuse? Resigned to standing on very nearly opposing sides of a war with no purpose where innocents are slaughtered like so many insects. All life is sacred until it affects profit. “When must you leave?”

He curls his hand over the bone of her hip, pressing his fingers into the softness of her stomach, dropping an apologetic kiss when she hisses at the leftover sting in the new bruises which he knows they both take pride in. If he only dared mark her more obviously – well. No time for would-do and might-be in the midst of war, eh? Her hair still captivates him, glossy and pale, reflecting the green tones thrown by the leaves; what would a life without her near him be? Those nightmares he has, of her slaughtered by the red demon from Naboo (Nightbrother, call him a Nightbrother, does he not deserve a name?) and dead in his arms, of her kidnapped by Kyr’stad, of her being hunted because of his regard for her, they wake him still. Gasping awake in an empty room, no Anakin or Ahsoka or Quinlan or Satine, shields locked as tight as they get, is lonely. 

Sometimes he wishes they could retire to Manda’yaim or Stewjon and live peaceful lives with as many chicks as she’d give him, with wide plains stretching below and the skies unlimited above. 

“Ander?”

There is nothing for it. She has held his heart, his very life, in her hands for well over a decade. “Oh, we’re getting old,” he groans to her. 

“Stop avoiding the question, riduur,” she scolds, tapping his ribs as is her wont. 

“The 501st get back tomorrow evening, and then everyone has four days of leave before we ship back out.”

“Well then,” she says, “you shall stay here.”

He quirks his brow at her. “What about my children?”

Satine waves her hand. “I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

Their eyes meet, hold for a minute, but they break quickly into soft giggles. The mere thought that Anakin and Ahsoka could survive alone – it’s preposterous, they both know. Gradually, the agonised tension leeches from her slender body, melting into him, under the shelter of his wings arching around her. Nestled together, even stood in the sitting room like this, illuminated by soft-green, they fit together as if their sole purpose was to hold each other close in the night. She settles her palms over his hands, holding him close to the bruises he left marking her. 

“Again?” she asks gently.

He smiles. “Again, and again, and again, love.”

Under his gaze she flushes in desire, the emotion – the wanting – leaking out into the Force. “Do that thing, where you push yourself into the Force?”

“Thought you said it hurts?”

Satine flushes. Ah, he smirks, tucking his nose into her mussed hair, ah indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt? Prompts for the ex-leper? Prompt for the ex-leper?  
> (monty python ref)


End file.
